At least it was steady, even. Not the unpredictable, searing, breath-stealing agony she had been hiding from the children for the last week. This pain she could deal with. This pain she had already figured out, and she welcomed it.
Between the brandy and the laudanum mangling her mind last night, Reanna hadn’t known where she was. But now, in the calmness of the morning when she opened her eyes, it was obvious this was Killian’s room. She had always wondered about it during their courtship. Wondered what it would be like to be immersed in the scent of him. They essence of him.
Flat on her back, her feet heavily swaddled in white linen and elevated by pillows, her eyes took in Killian’s sanctum. Enormous bed, the softest silk linens surrounding her, and the room was large, with very little in it except the bed, a short desk, one chair by the fireplace, a chess set on an ottoman, and a bureau. Lots of space and air. But the oddity of the room was that it was almost completely void of color. Blacks and greys. Only the dark walnut furniture gave a hint of color, if one could count the darkest brown grain a color.
Without even moving, the first thing she knew was that her stomach was still uneven. She had never taken laudanum before, much less mixed with straight brandy. The second thing she discovered was that she was naked, only the silk coverlet keeping her warm. No wonder. From the snippets of memories she managed to grasp onto of the previous night, anything she was wearing had either been ruined by blood or the contents of her stomach.
She wondered how many times she had thrown up. She distinctly remembered retching two times. Hell, maybe it was three or four times. She cringed as dry heaving on Killian’s shoulder flashed through her mind.
She pulled her hand from under the cover, touching her face and hair, loose, and still damp at the roots behind her head. There wasn’t a trace of any rogue substance on her head or hair. Somehow, someone had cleaned the mess of her up.
“How is the pain?” Killian’s voice cut into the open air in the room, slightly echoing.
She turned her head to the sound, only to see him walking in from the adjoining room. That was where his tub was, if she remembered correctly. He walked toward her, casually devoid of most clothes, only a loose, open white linen shirt and pants on his tall frame. His bare feet moved silently across the dark wood floors.
“The pain?” he asked again.
“Vicious.”
“Should I fetch Doctor Leiars?”
His eyebrow cocked at her, and Reanna thought she recognized actual concern on his face. She closed her eyes against it. She had to remember who she was facing. She knew full-well Killian wasn’t capable of real concern for her well-being.
She shook her head. “No. No laudanum. No brandy. My stomach does not agree with either.” She took a deep breath, fingers rubbing her collarbone. “I can stand the pain. It is not as bad as it had been during the last week.”
He eyed her, uncertain, seeming to waver between going out the door to get the doctor, and coming closer to her. He chose closer.
He stepped lightly, almost as if approaching a timid kitten, and came to the side of the bed. Stopping, he stared down at her, and Reanna braced herself. His face was a mask, the same mask of indifference that was there each and every time he had crushed her.
She closed her eyes and turned her head away from him. She couldn’t take him right now. Not right now. Not as raw as she was.
The bed moved as he sat down on the edge, and Reanna found herself pleading with God. Please no. Not right now. Whatever he had to say, couldn’t it wait just a few hours? Even one? Just enough time to gather her wits back about her.
“Your feet, Reanna. They were…they were grotesque. When we first saw them, Leiars didn’t think you would ever be able to walk on them again. He wanted to amputate some toes.”
Reanna’s eyes flew open. “What? My toes? No. No. Did he…” Her voice choked off. She only felt pain radiating from her feet, so much so that when she wiggled them, she couldn’t even tell if all her toes were still in place.
He reached for her hand above the covers, but instinct sent Reanna’s hand jerking away. She tucked her exposed arm back under the covers.
Killian drew his hand onto his thigh. “No. I did not let him. And once we got through the scabs and blood and puss, he agreed. He thinks they will heal. Some toes may go slightly crooked, though.”
Relief hitting her, she sighed, closing her eyes again. “If I am going to be fine, why are you telling me this?”
“You need to know what you did to yourself, Reanna. What you almost lost. So you never make a decision like it again.”
She kept her eyes closed against his words, shaking her head, disbelief lining her lips. “So you are scolding me? Truly?”
No answer came from Killian, and Reanna refused to open her eyes to him. He could scold her all he wanted. Maybe she could try to go back to sleep while he did so.
The silence edged on. The bed didn’t move, didn’t twitch. She guessed he was staring at her, and his heat next to her hip was starting to cross the silk barrier and warm her skin.
Damn. She just wanted him to leave. And instead, he was going to hover. Hover silently. Silently and staring.
He must be concocting how he was going to kick her out of his life this time.
Well, there was no need. She wanted out of here just as much as he wanted her out of here. Her right hand moved out from under the covers and went to her forehead, rubbing it.
Still silence.
Blast it. She was going to break. He wasn’t leaving. Fine. If he wasn’t going start his latest crushing of her, she was going to prod him along. She wasn’t going to lie there, heart thundering in her chest, stomach twisting, waiting. Not on top of her current pain.
She rubbed her head again, eyes not opening, and the words hurt against her throat. “What do you want from me, Killian? What?”
No answer.
She opened her eyelids, forcing herself to meet his brown eyes. She had once thought those were the warmest eyes she had ever seen. But now she knew differently. Whatever she saw in them, she was wrong. She always had been. She had no idea what she was looking at in that moment.
“What? What do you want?”
His eyes didn’t break from hers, but several of Reanna’s painful heartbeats passed before he opened his mouth. He looked as though he was actually considering an answer.
“I want you to heal. I want you to not kill yourself with work and worry. I want you to smile. I want to hear your voice light, not weighed down by pain. I want you not to flinch away when I touch you.” His hand went to rub the back of his neck as his voice lowered a notch. “I want to erase time, Reanna. I…I want you to look at me like you once did.”
Reanna blinked. Blinked hard. What the hell was he saying?
Her mouth opened and closed several times before words escaped. “How I looked at you?” She shook her head, trying to right his words in her head. “How I looked at you? I don’t know who you are, Killian. I never knew. And I am not that person anymore. I don’t want to be that person. That person was naïve in the worse possible way—she was naïve in love. It was not real. That cannot be me again. My heart could not survive it. And I cannot do it to ease whatever new conscience you have apparently developed.”
“What if it was real?”
“Killian, no.”
“What if it was real, Reanna? Not what we had. What we could have. You loved—”
“No. No. Don’t you dare speak about love to me. You don’t know the meaning of the word, Killian. And you sure as hell don’t deserve to utter the sound of it.”
His eyes narrowed at her. “There are things you do not understand, Reanna.”
“Yes.” She chuckled. “You are right. I do not understand a damn thing you have done to me, Killian. But here is what I do understand. I gave you everything. Every little piece of me. You didn’t want it. You. Did. Not. Want. It. And I lost everything. Everything. Who I was. Hopes. Dreams…Love.”
H
er voice cracked. “I lost it all because I gave it to the wrong person. You were the wrong person. I lost it because you just threw it all away. You threw me away.” Her words stopped, choked off.
Killian stood from the bed without word, took a step away, and Reanna almost took a breath. But then he turned, moving back to the side of the bed, staring down on her again. His fingers traced little circles on the coverlet.
She yanked her hand up from the under the covers, palm going across the bridge of her nose and pressing hard against the tears that had already started to escape.
She had been done with the tears. Months ago they had dried up. And the well that had just replenished to overflowing wasn’t fair.
Not now. Not like this. Not in front of him. Not when she couldn’t move from the bed and run away.
“What if, Reanna? What if we started, from today onward? What if it was real? What if I was real?”
“No. Do not ask me, Killian. Please do not ask me.”
“You were right that night at Holloton, Reanna.” He sat again, this time, his weight hitting the bed heavy. “Our wedding night. I did feel it. I didn’t want to. I tried to convince myself it was not real. But I felt every second of that night. And I haven’t felt anything in a long time. Not before. Not since. Not until last night.”
Her hand flew from her eyes. “Last night? Watching me in torture? Watching me in pain? That made you feel?”
“No. God, no.” He grabbed her hand, snatching it before she could move it away. “It was not just your feet. Those had to be fixed, one way or another. And that was hell for me, to know I did that to you.” He sighed, running his free hand through his hair.
“It was your hand. The moment you put it on my cheek before we started on your feet. Even in pain. Even hating me. Even with all that, your hand was gentle. Your hand on my face, it felt…it felt like that was where it should be, where it belonged. Like it had been missing for my whole life, and it found its way home.”
He took a deep breath, shaking his head as his eyes closed. “And then you moved it along my face, and I could feel callouses on your hand.”
She tried to pull from his grip, but he held tight, turning her hand palm up. The pad of his thumb traced the raised red welts that had dotted her skin for weeks.
“The depths you would go to for those children. The depths I made you go. These are mine. I put them there. Your feet. I did that to you.” He looked up at her. “What I did is unforgivable, and I will not ask you for forgiveness I do not deserve. But you must know how sorry I am.”
He moved her hand, letting it slip from his fingers to a gentle rest on her belly.
“I have much to atone for, Reanna. All I ask is the chance to do so.”
Without another breath, he stood and walked out the door.
Reanna started to flip onto her side, but the movement sent fresh waves of pain radiating from her feet. She fell onto her back, and settled for turning her head on the pillow to stare at the closed door.
The tears started to fall, soaking the pillow within a minute.
Even after all this time, she still was not all right. He still had the damn power to crush the air from her lungs. To shred her heart.
It wasn’t fair, and she hated herself for it.
Hated herself for not being able to hate him.
~~~
After two quick unanswered knocks, the door to his study opened, and Killian jumped up from behind his desk.
“Aggie, good God, what are you doing here?” He ran around the desk, grabbing her hand and elbow as she waddled, and led her over to the settee. “You cannot even move. Why in the hell did Devin let you leave the house?” He clasped both of her hands to help ease her down into a sitting position.
Leaning back on the vine-patterned silk, she took a deep breath, looking at her belly. “He did not. He was gone when I left.”
“He does not know you are here?”
“No. I sent him to the offices. I have not had one minute alone in days. I normally love it when Devin is nearby, but right now he has no control. I make the smallest twitch or an extra breath of air, and he jumps up, hawk eyes on me, pacing, worried the baby is going to just slip on out and bounce onto the floor.” Her hand swept in exaggeration as she settled into the cushions.
“He is convinced I should be doing nothing but sitting still and breathing. I know he just wants to make sure I am all right, but the smothering has reached new heights.”
“So you snuck out?”
“I did not sneak. Miss Collier called on me about fifteen minutes after Devin left. She told me what happened last night, and I was worried about Reanna, so I came over. Devin was not at home, so there was no sneaking.” She waved her hand. “I know I should be hidden away from the world right now, but I could not let this rest.”
“Aggie, you need to be at home. That baby is going to come out at any second. Is your carriage still out front?” He walked to the window facing the street and looked down. “Good. Home for you.”
“No, wait. Just five minutes, please? A few minutes, and I will go home, I promise. I have already visited with Reanna.”
“You walked upstairs? Ludwig didn’t announce you. Hell, Devin is going to kill me.”
“I wanted to visit with Reanna without you hovering. So I asked him not to let you know I was here quite yet. Please, sit. I cannot stand to have another man pacing in front of me. Days of watching Devin do it has made me dizzy.”
Killian crossed his arms in front of his chest, looking down on her. “I will stand in one spot, then, for your sensibilities. So Reanna was awake when you went up there?”
“Yes.”
“How do you think she is?”
“Honestly, she is confused.”
“Confused? About what?”
“About you. She does not know what to think. All of a sudden you want her? Why? You want to move on? For what purpose? Of course she is confused. That, and she thinks you are going to close down the orphanage. Or at the very least, not let her go back there.”
“She hates me.”
“I would not go that far, only because I do not think she is capable of hate. But if so, yes, you well deserve it.”
Sighing, Killian turned and sat next to Aggie, elbows balancing on his knees, hands clasped in front of his mouth.
Aggie lifted a hand from her belly and placed it gently on his shoulder. “Killian, you know you are one of the dearest people to me. Sometimes I may dislike you, but I always love you. You are family. But you also know I never approved of what you have done to Reanna in order to achieve your revenge. You have been a complete bastard to her, and now you are going to have to deal with the consequences your own idiocy created.”
He turned to glare at her. “That is harsh.”
“I only say it because I want you to understand the magnitude of what you have done, so you can try and fix it.”
“I do not think it can be fixed.”
“Rubbish. Your idiocy is in the past. There is nothing for it, now. So how do you get her to think about the present, and not the atrocities you set upon her?” She bit her lip. “That is a tough one. Does she really know anything about you? About your past? About your childhood?”
“No. And she said I killed her heart. Killed her heart, Aggie. How do I come back from that? How do I make amends?”
“Maybe you start by acknowledging that you have had all the power, and with it, you have taken away everything in her life. Now you need to give it all back to her.”
“How would I even begin that? She does not trust me. She does not like me.”
“I do not have an answer for how to do it, but I can tell you how you don’t do it. You don’t take away from her what her world has become.”
“The orphans?”
“Precisely. She has built something very admirable on her own, and you cannot just ban her from that. Those children are her life, her world. They are what she trusts. And you are right, she does not trust you right no
w.”
“But she is killing herself over them. You saw the pain—how frail she is.”
“You cannot underestimate how much they mean to her. You took away her innocence, Killian. You did that, and it crushed her. Do you not understand that these children—their innocence—are everything to her? That she will do anything and everything to see that they remain innocent for as long as possible? You cannot take her away from them, Killian.”
“So I need to send her back to her aunt’s home?”
Aggie smiled, her sparkling eyes plotting. “That is where fortune has smiled upon you, my friend. Even she knows she is stuck here until her feet heal. There is already too much mayhem at her aunt’s home. So you have been granted time. Use it wisely. I think she can learn to trust you. And I think if you want it, she may even find a way to love you again.”
Aggie’s face tightened into a wince, and the rubbing on the top of her belly sped, but after a moment, her smile reappeared. “Reanna has an incredible soul, Killian. Of all the women to be an ass to, you picked the right one. She loved you once. You did not want her love, and you tossed it aside. But she did love you. Now you just need to decide how far you are willing to go.”
Killian rubbed his forehead. “She is different now, Aggie. Aside from not believing a word I say, she questions everything. I don’t intimidate her like I once did, and she is not afraid to challenge me. And she cares so deeply. So many in her place would have turned bitter, mean, but she didn’t. She moved on, making a life for herself. I found that out at Holloton from the staff. She learned to ride, and then once she found those children, she put all her energy into them. She found purpose. Purpose without me.”
A wide smile cracked Aggie’s face as her eyes brightened at him. “Killian, you want your wife, don’t you? You have actually decided that you want her. For her and her alone.”
“Maybe.” Killian’s eyes went down, shaking his head with a sad chuckle.
“There is no maybe in this, Killian. There is only yes or no. You cannot break her heart again. You cannot take this lightly.”
Hold Your Breath 02 - Unmasking the Marquess Page 15